


(Pick a Place to Die) Where it's High and Dry

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Gen, minor appearance by a 5ds and zexal character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5600251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuuri. Dennis. Shun. Ruri. Rin.<br/>Shun challenges Yuuri to a duel, pistols drawn at dawn.<br/>This is how five people prepare for a duel that not all of them will be walking away from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Pick a Place to Die) Where it's High and Dry

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This fic was born out of many, many things that were very important to me in 2015. I didn't quite get to post it on time, but oh well.  
> 2\. I want to give a special mention to [Congratulations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5182508), which is the really lovely fic that finally prompted me to stop procrastinating and listen to the Hamilton soundtrack. (Now the arc v fandom has two fics based off of Hamilton songs whoops) I've listened to [Ten Duel Commandments](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS79uxNFoHw) over two hundred times just writing this fic...  
> 3\. The usual "the only thing canon about this Ruri is her appearance" disclaimer. Also some for Rin, as we haven't seen too much of her yet.  
> 4\. So, pairings. This started out in my Shun/Dennis document, then Ruri pov happened and some Dennis/Ruri crept in, and you could even read into some Rin/Ruri if you really wanted. Basically, I have no idea what's going on, but it's all pretty gen.

I.

                _The challenge: demand satisfaction/If they apologize, no need for further action_

They meet in one of Academia’s courtyards, Shun and Ruri on one side, Yuuri stepping out of the shadows on the other. Stone walls seem to loom in around them, closing in on the rectangle of sky threatening a storm above.

“Yuuri,” Shun snarls. Yuuri smiles and laughs. A chill runs down Ruri’s spine that has nothing to do with the cool wind blowing off the ocean.

“I thought you would’ve left by now. Academia’s done for. You _won,_ ” he says, though the way he purrs out the word makes it sound to Ruri like he knows exactly how hollow their victories so far have been. “Or were you looking for me? I’m flattered. ”

“You hurt my sister,” Shun says by way of explanation. Yuuri turns his cold smile on her. She stares back with every bit of defiance she can muster, and then some- she’s seen the worst that Academia could do to her, and she lets the fact that she’s still standing say everything her words cannot.

After a long moment, Yuuri blinks, shrugs, a soft roll of his shoulders. “And? What do you want me to do? _Apologize?_ ”

“ _Yes_ ,” Shun spits back, “That’s a good start.”

A moment of silence hangs between them. Ruri doesn’t dare to breathe, lest she shatter it like a fallen teacup.

Yuuri smiles again. The silence is broken, and any illusions that Ruri holds that this dispute can be settled peacefully are crushed underfoot and ground into dust. “Why,” Yuuri says, “Would I ever do that?”

II.

                _If they don’t, grab a friend, that’s your second/Your lieutenant when there’s reckoning to be reckoned_

His second will be Ruri- there has never been a person Shun trusts more, and he knows more than suspects that there never will be. They’ll defend each other to the death, follow each other down into the pits of hell and back, and live to tell the tale. Dirt stains Ruri’s face, and there’s dried blood under her nails, digging into his palm as she squeezes his hand tight before stepping forward.

Across the field, Yuuri lets out a long breath, turns just enough to gaze around the shadows behind him. Shun watches him regard his surroundings lazily, eyes ambling and aimless- Shun knows who his gaze will settle on before perhaps even Yuuri himself.

“Oh,” Yuuri says, eyes narrowing, “You’ll do it, won’t you?”

III.

                _Have your seconds meet face to face/Negotiate a peace…/Or negotiate a time and place_

There were four ways Ruri spent her time as a prisoner- sleeping, talking to Rin through the walls of their cells, thinking to herself, and refusing to cater to Academia’s whims. The first two were often much more pleasant than the latter.

Ruri and Rin spoke about anything and everything, sitting back to back against the walls. About home, about friends, about dueling and all of their favorite things. On days Academia demanded them, on the days that Rin woke screaming and Ruri woke in a cold sweat, they’d tap on the wall and whisper reassurances between them. “It’ll be okay,” Rin would tell her, “We’ll steal some disks and get out of here. We’ll go right to Heartland and get ourselves some real, proper decks, right? And then no one’s going to be able to stop us.”

She always paused, always waited for Ruri to tap out a quick one-two on the wall as her breathing slowed. She was here. She wasn’t safe, she wasn’t all right- but she was still _here_ , and the thought never failed to calm her.

“And after that? I’m going to defeat Jack Atlas,” Rin said, and talked at length about the future waiting for her back home.

“I’m going to go back to Heartland. I’m going to see my brother and Yuuto and Dennis again,” Ruri always replied, and with every word threw oil onto the flame that was her hope in them.

On a particularly good day, they traded instructions on how to special summon their respective ace monsters. It was all theory, and it made Ruri miss dueling terribly. Or rather, it made her miss dueling the way it was supposed to be, not the tool of war it had become. The thought of Shun and Yuuto’s faces in a far-off, fictional future when she Synchro Summoned in front of them for the first time kept her going through many a bad day after.

On one of those days, Ruri woke to the sound of Rin yelling, blinking sleep from her eyes in the timeless dark of the windowless room. “I said, don’t you dare! She doesn’t want to see you. Not now, not ever.”

There was scuffling outside, and Ruri held her breath as she crept over to the wall, pressing her ear to the door. She could hear the sounds of guards trying to placate Rin, heard Rin gasp in pain. Rage boiled through her, crashed through her veins like a dam crumbling under the pressure. She opened her mouth to yell, raised her hand to slam her fist on the door-

The handle started to rattle, and Ruri pulled back.

“I told you to get away!” Rin yelled, “You don’t deserve to talk to her. You don’t even deserve to be in the same room as her, and you kno-“ An awful choking sound, like the guards had knocked the air from Rin’s lungs. The handle on the door stopped turning.

For a long moment, silence. Then there was shuffling, the sound of someone backing away from her door with heavy steps. She heard the faint creaking of the door hinges of the room next to hers. Ruri tapped on the dividing wall. “Rin? Are you okay?”

Rin tapped back, then dodged the question. “Trust me, Ruri. You didn’t want to see someone like that. I hope you never have to.”

If it were a better day, Ruri would have pushed. There were secrets they kept from each other, the price paid to try and keep each other’s spirits high- but this had been about her, and she would have said it was her right to know who had come calling for her. But it was a bad day, and Ruri accepted it with her silence.

On a better day, Dennis steps out of a pillar’s shadow, clad in Obelisk Blue.

Ruri laughs humorlessly. “Of course,” she says, “you’re the person Rin didn’t want me to see.”

His face is drawn, pale in the clouded night. Shadows play over him as he approaches, and Ruri steels herself even as conflicting emotions wage war in her chest. Misplaced warmth rises up as disappointment weighs it back down and anger still burns in her blood. Ruri doesn’t know what she’ll say until they’re standing face to face and the words are already out of her mouth.

“I can’t forgive you.”

“I got you out,” Dennis says. The ‘ _doesn’t that count for anything?’_ remains unspoken.

Ruri remembers being younger, softer- she remembers trust in the warmth of a hand, remembers happiness in the exchanges of smiles, in the sound of laughter, in the way even the most average of memories have become dyed in honey-sweet nostalgia.

Ruri remembers fear, remembers her friends’ hands dragged from hers and the soft flutter of cards as they fell to the ground. She remembers running- always running- remembers pressing her back to the remnants of an alley wall, holding her breath and counting down the moments until she could finally, finally strike back.

She remembers a charming street performer and the genuine happiness his show had brought her-

“It’s not enough,” she says, and if she sees some of those harsh lines of Academia bend and snap within him, sees a bit of the person she used to know break along with them, well… She’s less sympathetic than she used to be.

“Dawn. Heartland. The central park. You should know it well,” Ruri spits, watches the flicker in Dennis’ eyes as she claws a little deeper into him with every word.

_“Regret,”_ she wants to say, _“is such a bad look on you.”_

Dennis nods, then turns his back, waves a hand. “I won’t forget it.”

Ruri watches him go. The swirl of feelings crashing over her in waves are making her lightheaded, curl low in her chest and threaten to make her sick.

They had forgotten, just for a moment, that this duel is not to be between them.

IV.

                _If they don’t reach a peace, that’s alright/Time to get some pistols and a doctor on site_

Rin brings a doctor from Synchro over, the closest thing this duel will ever have to a neutral party. Beneath red hair are clear brown eyes, dulled and tired from watching bloodshed, from seeing life fade from her patients even as she pours her very determination to live into them. Rin feels her heart break for her- she had always been so kind, treating the children of the commons for free because she was just a student. But, Rin thinks with no small sense of helplessness, there are no tops or commons anymore, no Duel Kings or labor camps, just cards with human faces and squabbling groups of survivors.

“It’s a duel,” Rin tells her, and the doctor stands to leave, gathers tattered bandages up in her arms with practiced efficiency.

“No,” Rin says, “It’s a _duel_.” The doctor sends her a soft, broken look, then starts to pack a bag.

They arrive early, and only Shun and Ruri are there. The siblings stand close, backs tense and eyes sharp even as they lean into each other. It strikes Rin that they are like twin pillars, rising tall in the shattered skyline. The sight is almost timeless, illuminated only by the vast expanse of fading stars, more numerous than Rin could ever have imagined in the lightless city.

But the moment doesn’t last forever. At the other end of the park, Yuuri appears in a flash of violet light and a fluttering of his cape. A stray star streaks across the sky, falling into the horizon, and Rin wishes in vain for a happy ending.

“You should turn around now,” Rin says, and the doctor nods, adjusts her bag on her shoulder and turns away. There are already scraps of fabrics clenched in her pale hands, ready to soak up the blood.

V.

                _Duel before the sun is in the sky/Pick a place to die where it’s high and dry_

Heartland is ruined and beautiful in the pre-dawn hours. Shun hates how familiar he is with the broken skyline, with the rubble that still lines the streets. The cracked dome of the refugee shelter rises high in the distance, over the hill from the central park where they stand gathered now.

Here too everything is cast in grey and brown, coated with a permanent layer of dirt and ash. Trees are uprooted, and footprints of the Giants litter the ground at irregular intervals. Staring at them for too long sends Shun into fits of memory- of the sound of brick fracturing under Academia’s advance, of the screams of his classmates as they fell at his side, of desperate, whispered reassurances. _‘It’s okay, I’m here. I’ll protect you. You’ll be safe._ ’ Of promises, always broken.

He won’t afford Yuuri the dignity of dying on his home soil. This, at the very least, is something well within his power. And Dennis… It would be easier if he hadn’t, for just a moment, legitimately enjoyed dueling against him. It would be easier if Dennis hadn’t expressed even a shred of regret for his actions against Heartland, if he hadn’t cleared the way for Ruri’s escape long before Shun arrived at the door of her room-

But if Dennis really regrets, Shun thinks, then he won’t mind if Heartland’s new foundations are built on his spilled blood and scattered ash.

VI.

                _Leave a note for your next of kin/Tell ‘em where you been. Pray that hell or heaven lets you in_

He’s not coming back from this last trip to Heartland, one way or another. Dennis knows this. The challenge was for Yuuri, not for him- but if Shun lives, his next opponent will be Dennis. If Yuuri lives, well… He’s sure that Ruri will champion her brother’s cause.

(He knows from experience that Ruri is a much better shot than Shun anyway.)

His cloak swishes around his ankles as he winds his way down Heartland’s streets, moving towards the shelter. No one disturbs him in the pre-dawn hours. The eerie silence is not unlike that which surrounds a dead man heading to the gallows, and Dennis chuckles low and dark at the thought.

He finds her near the back entrance of the shelter, still taking guard duty though the war is finally over. Ribbon is tied up in her hair, Resistance red, and though she’d been no more than a novice when she had first come to Dennis’ show, a duel disk is on her arm.

She readies it as he turns the corner, card already in her hand. Dennis stands still, meets her eyes with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. It feels old, fake, like he’s exposing every hollow in his bones. The girl’s eyes flicker with recognition regardless.

“Dennis?” she says slowly, lowering her arm, “Is that you?”

“Hi, Kotori,” he replies, and Kotori closes the distance between them, wraps him up into a hug. She throws back his hood in the process, and Dennis tugs the collar of his cloak higher up his neck. If Kotori notices the motion, notices the flash of blue underneath the black, she says nothing about it. She is far too nice to him, he thinks, for someone who only spent a week pretending to be Resistance.

“We thought you were dead,” she says instead, “and then Ruri disappeared, and then…”

She shakes her head, slow as she pulls back, and Dennis doesn’t ask what happened to the rest of her friends. He’s lost much, but at the very least he still has his tact. “Ruri is alive,” he says, and relief shakes visibly through Kotori’s body, seen in the slump of her shoulders, heard in her long, wavering breath.

“Thank goodness,” she says, then, “Where is she? Is she safe?”

Dennis doesn’t answer. “This is for her,” he says instead, holding out an envelope. Kotori accepts it with a hesitant hand.

“She’s coming back.”

It isn’t a question. Dennis doesn’t patronize her with a response. “Just… give it to her for me when she gets back.”

“Okay,” Kotori says, then tucks it gently into her coat pocket. Dennis is glad she doesn’t tell him to deliver it himself, that she doesn’t call out to his retreating back. By the end of this, he’d like there to be at least one person whose trust he hasn’t broken. Betrayal, after all, requires expectation from at least one party involved.

(If Kotori were to open the envelope, “ _Kurosaki Ruri”_ written in neat hand on its front, she would find a letter.

_Dear Ruri_ , it would read, _I won’t waste your time with apologies. I don’t blame you if you don’t read this, either, but if you do, I have just one favor I want to ask of you. I know I’m not someone who can ask anything of you. Trust me, I haven’t forgotten. Maybe asking this way is selfish, but it’s the only way I can. However this duel turns out, I want for you to take care of this for me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back for it. Maybe one day, if we all walk out of this alive. Either way, it deserves better than me._

_As always, Dennis_

If Kotori were to open the envelope, to unfold the carefully creased letter, a single black card would come tumbling out from where it was tucked gently between the folds.

But she doesn’t, and the card remains tucked away, believing quietly in its duelist, waiting for his return.)

VII.

                _Confess your sins. Ready for the moment of adrenaline when you finally face your opponent_

Yuuri supposes the weight of his crimes should weigh heavy on his shoulders, an Atlas holding up the heavens. Kidnapping, killing, both sins that should rake their cold fingers up his spine, that should send shivers wracking through his body at the very recollection of them-

His hands are steady as he loads his pistol.

But Atlas, he thinks, can’t be the proper metaphor. The sky had cracked and shattered in Heartland, in the City, and Yuuri had been complicit in letting it fall.

He pauses for a moment, casts his gaze over at the Kurosaki siblings, huddled close. Rin is standing just off to the side, watching Ruri with obvious concern. Yuuri wonders, briefly, if he would feel anything other than mounting anticipation if anyone was waiting for him to return.

Tearing him from his thoughts is Dennis, who strides into the park and discards a worn cloak as he approaches. Yuuri catches his eye, and Dennis returns it with a small nod. “Are you ready?”

Dennis shrugs, face impassive. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No,” Yuuri says, “It doesn’t.”

Across the field, Ruri steps forward, having caught sight of Dennis.

“Showtime,” Dennis mutters under his breath, not quite as softly as he thinks. It sounds to Yuuri oddly bitter.

VIII.

                _Your last chance to negotiate/Send in your seconds, see if they can set the record straight…_

There will be no peace made here, Ruri knows as she crosses the field, meeting Dennis halfway.

“Dennis,” she says cordially.

“Ruri,” he replies. The smile plastered over his face is so perfect, so inherently fake, Ruri wonders how he ever managed to trick her in the first place. Or maybe, she thinks, noting the pistol holstered casually under the open jacket of his uniform, he used to be more genuine.

“We’re beyond apologies,” she says.

“Yuuri won’t agree to anything you propose,” Dennis says. There’s a cold edge of resignation to it.

“Then it’s a duel.”

Dennis lets the smile fall for just a moment, looks desperately like he wants to say something. Ruri closes her eyes, breathes in the fresh, dry air of home. It tastes like ash and dust, but beneath it is the flavor of Heartland as she remembers it from better days.

There are things she misses from her long time spent as Academia’s prisoner. She misses strawberry gum, she misses her brother, she misses the way Heartland was before it all, shining and glorious and pulsing, alive-

She’s had enough time to realize that Dennis can no longer be one of them.

Ruri opens her eyes. “Goodbye, Dennis.”

She turns on the spot and heads towards her brother, counting off the paces as she walks. Dennis’ gaze burns into her back for a long moment before he follows suit. Shun settles beside Ruri at the end of the line, and Ruri presses her forehead to his shoulder. “Don’t,” she whispers into the fabric of his coat, “waste your shot.”

Shun pulls her into a hug. A real, full hug, one of his hands resting on the back of her head, running fingers softly over her hair. She clutches at the lapels of his coat, allows herself one shaky breath, the sound muffled in his chest. “I won’t,” he says.

Ruri closes her eyes. For a second- just a second- she pretends that it’s before the invasion, that this vast and profound concern pooling in her lungs is for anything but reality. The moment passes. _This is it,_ she realizes, the sudden certainty sending her thoughts scrambling to regain balance, _This is the end of the line._

“Good,” she says as she pulls back. Rin takes her hand as they head to the doctor’s side, and the touch grounds her, readies her for the end, one way or another. She pretends that her breath comes easy, that  her concern isn’t already drowning her.

IX.

                _Look ‘em in the eye, aim no higher/Summon all the courage you require/Then count_

Rin squeezes Ruri’s hand, whispers a final, _“It’ll be okay_. _I’ll stay with you no matter what,_ ” into Ruri’s ear.

It’s Rin’s way of telling her that she’ll be her second. Ruri prays to any god that will listen that it won’t come to that.

_One Two Three_

Yuuri takes his aim. One shot, straight to the heart. That’s all this will take- and unfortunately for Shun, Yuuri thinks, he’s an excellent marksman.

_Four Five Six_

Dennis stares out at the scene, his pistol impossibly heavy at his side. For a fleeting moment he sees himself standing in Yuuri’s place, sees himself staring down Shun over the barrel of a gun. He wonders, even as his hands go slack at his sides, if he could take the shot.

_Seven Eight Nine_

Shun rests his finger on the trigger. His eyes catch Yuuri’s, and a thread of deadly anticipation runs between them. They will not miss their shots.

X.

                _Ten paces!/ Fire!_

Shots shatter the dawn.  The next moment plays out as a small eternity. Shun crumples to the ground. Ruri pulls free of Rin’s hand with a scream while Rin stands frozen, breath caught in her throat. Rin accidentally meets Dennis’ eyes from across the field, a shared moment of panic, of incredulity. They had known that this would be the end result. Now that they’re living it, it seems like a dream, a shared hallucination where emotions are far away and dull and consequence is but a hindrance to be remembered come morning. When she blinks again, it’ll all be gone, and she’ll be back on her thin bed in her Academia cell, thinking that she’d just had the strangest dream. She catches Yuuri sway on his feet out of the corner of her eye, and she can hear the swish fabric as the doctor turns behind her, hesitating a single moment as she takes in the aftermath-

“Go to Kurosaki!” someone yells. Maybe it’s her, maybe it’s one of Academia’s; Rin can’t say either way.

The doctor races to Shun’s side as Dennis runs to support a collapsing Yuuri, who’s clutching at his chest with one hand. “You know,” Yuuri chokes out, “You’re a better shot than I thought you’d be.”

It’s impossible, but Rin thinks she hears Shun laugh. Rin follows Ruri, moves to his side. Ruri clutches at his hand as the doctor presses red rags into the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. “I promised,” Shun says, “I wouldn’t waste my shot.”

“You didn’t,” Yuuri replies. Rin turns her head to watch as blood seeps from between his fingers. He staggers closer, though Rin knows not why. Yuuri falls, Dennis trying and failing to support him.

Rin looks down at him, watching with an odd sort of detachment from the emotions raging just beyond her capacity for them- there, but not pressing, not yet. She does, objectively, hate him. Like Ruri, she is not quite so kind as to find forgiveness hidden deep in the recesses of her heart. But for a moment she sees Yuugo in the pinched lines of his face, wonders exactly how she would feel if it was Yuugo lying there and she had found that someone had stood over him, doing nothing to prevent his death.

She shrugs off her jacket and forces Dennis aside, watches bright fabric turn deep red as she places pressure on the wound.

Her first thought is that it might not be enough. _“Why?”_ Yuuri’s eyes ask her as she looks over to meet them.

Rin thinks- _‘This is how I stop being a bystander in my own future.’_

 “No one,” Rin says as the first rays of the sun cast the sky in orange and gold, silhouetting them in long shadows, “is going to die here today.”


End file.
